I’ve just sat through around an hour of newly-elongated (no, not changed as such – elongated. Improved? A bit. Hope you like paintings!) Mass Effect 3 endings so I can’t quite bring myself to watch another seven minutes of explosions and other lighting effects right now, but I’m basically just skim-viewing this full-length E3 presentation of PlanetSide 2 then leaving it for myself to come back to properly tomorrow. It’s all been quick clips and devblogs so far, but this seems to be more of an overview of the SOE’s MMOFPS’ scope’n’stuff.

I’m here for my MAX suit, please. In small, though. Yes, small MAX, I do appreciate the irony. Just shut up and give me my power-armour, damn you. Also, I’ve traditionally played as Vanu but the New Conglomerate totally have the best suit there.

Also, that could have done with a bit more in-game stuff alongside the unit roster and menus, as that charge-to-war at the end looked spectacular.

If you’re hankering for some mass battles in the near future, SOE are orchestrating a massed return to PlanetSide 1 this Sunday. If you’ve ever had a PS subscription, they’ll be lobbing you 30 days of free game time. Tempting, very, very temping… More details on that here.

The population is way up from returning players, and anyone who hasn’t played since 2009 already has 45 days of free game time due to some hacking thing that happened. I’ve been enjoying my return, and am vividly remembering just how brilliant Planetside’s design was (and also, how awful its mechanics were).

Definitely suit up for the event on the first, it should be epic. Really, really hoping people are good sports and we can get all the empires in one place without people shooting eachother.

Funny thing about that, they talked about it in the dev videos and they are actually two kind of cloaks:
– A light cloak that you can use with a sniper rifle intended to move stealthily from one firing position to another.
– A heavy cloak that limits you to light weapons but allow you to play like a cyber ninja.

Could be worth contacting SOE support and see if they can help, they’ve been pretty good at getting people access to their accounts again even with forgotten logins/emails. If you still have the CD key somewhere that’d probably be the easiest form of proof.

While it was very much a “read between the lines” thing, the announcement today was an announcement that they are officially starting the closed beta process (not the beta, but the process needed to hold it) as opposed to the internal testing they’ve been doing for a year. I’d expect some invites to go out within a couple weeks.

As someone who’s never played Planetside, Tribes, and the like, would I be correct in assuming that the likelihood of me enjoying this game is dependent upon how well I like shooters in general or if I have a clan?

I play TF2 weekly with some friends, so, I’m at least a bit familiar with it. My interest is piqued to be sure.

Bit of both, if you hate shooters naturally you won’t like a shooting game, but you can definitely get more out of it with group and clan play. Not required by any means, but it can improve your experience.

Sort of, but not really. As Soziele says, if you hate shooters you won’t like this, but you could be lukewarm on them and still love it. While it sounds like they’re working hard on the mechanics, the joy of Planetside comes from the possibilities, the huge battles, the metagame, the visual spectacle.

Also, if the squad/outfit system is anything like the original, you DON’T need an outfit (clan) to enjoy it. People can form open squads of up to 10 people, and you can open up a “squad search” and just join one, so you can coordinate on your own chat channel, share experience points, etc. I’ve had a really good time just joining up with squads and meeting new people.

That said, there’s no harm in joining an outfit; there were a lot of “casual outfits” in Planetside and I can only assume there will be even more in PS2, so it’s not like you have to be a hardcore tournament player to join one. If nothing else, you can join the Rock Paper Shotgun ones.

You’re too late, it’s already been decided in the forums. I was pulling for Rock Paper Galaxy, but Rock Planet Side seems to be the name for the main outfit (VS), NC one will probably be Rock Traitor Shotgun.

I think PS2 would be much more to your liking. Tribes is a nice game by its own right, but it requires you to be able to lead fast moving targets. Because everyone except base defenders are a fast moving target. I quickly ended up much more frustrated than exhilarated.

PS2 is like Battlefield in space. You’ll get the optimal experience if you join a large group, but you shouldn’t have to have a good time. And you won’t have to become a on-the-fly trigonometry wizard like you do for Tribes.

Alec, the reason there wasn’t much combat footage is that this is the E3 “Theater Presentation” that was given at 15 minute intervals in order to brief people visiting the booth. The combat footage was being played live outside the little theater room, and open to be played by the public. ;)

I want to be excited for this but the UT/Tribes kind of feel to it (not as jumpy and floaty and ski-ey obviously) doesn’t do much for me. I like my online FPS games where a well aimed burst can drop a man…ones like this where there’s clearly defined low/medium/heavy damage weapons and players with lots of HP and battle armor just tend to annoy me.

Oh Phantoon, you show great originality with the classic “if you don’t like this game I like that’s not Call of Duty, you must like Call of Duty!” It’s the gaming version of “If you don’t like this thing that I do, maybe you should go listen to/watch Justin Bieber/Avatar” It’s lazy, it’s played out, it’s dumb, it’s condescending, and you can cram it up your ass.

At this point, I’m thoroughly sick of shooters where the entire core gamplay cycle is ‘Put head in crosshair, click, repeat’. Whatever happened to having a wide variety of enemies, and weapons suited for dealing with each one? Tough damage-sponge enemies, weak snipers, fast runners, blockers, fliers and more. 90% of shooters these days have one main enemy type: Man With Gun, who will always die to one headshot or 2-3 body shots. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to fight a helicopter or a tank in a scripted sequence.

Well I got an email about Planetside 2 today asking for my computers specs, saying that the next phase of testing is about to start. Although I’m a little wary about clicking on any of the links as at the top of the email it says they’ve changed their address to @e-sonyonline.com.

Having a quick look online seems to have some people saying its phishing and some saying it’s legit, and sony.com is timing out for me at the moment so can’t check on there. Anyone know if this is a legit mail?

Hmm. I got the same e-mail and I have to admit that it looks all kinds of fishy. But I think it’s actually legit. Really, incredibly, unbelievably dumb to be using that domain name and personally I think that someone’s head should roll for it! But still, legit. It’s looks like it was actually professionally made and there is, in fact, a computer survey being asked at planetside2.com as well as a new producer’s letter. I figure it’s something that there would be official communication on. Seeing as I haven’t received anything other than this — official or otherwise — I’m going to jump to the conclusion that the one e-mail that refers to all of this stuff is, in fact, from SOE.

If you want to be certain and safe that you’re not getting redirected through anything nasty though, just go to planetside2.com and fill out the computer survey there instead of clicking the link in the e-mail.

I got the same thing, It does sound very fishy however. Why not use the planetside2 domain, or the actual SOE domain? Very curious. If I remembered my password without having to look at a paper I’d look deeper into it right now.

It’s legit, you don’t even have to use the link in the email. Just go to the Planetside website and fill in the system spec survey. It doesn’t even require a system scan, just multiple choice tick boxes.

Yeah, just went to the site itself and logged in and entered my hardware that way. Although there was a web page bug that prevented the survey option from even appearing if you have Firefox (or whatever browser) set to a non US English….

Given the constant arguments made by some here in support of Brink’s refusal to include female models in its endless array of customization, I’m stunned that Sony’s shareholders have not revolted in fury at the decision to almost double the development costs of Planetside 2 just to include chicks.